Gideon Rowe

Ellie is spending the night with her grandmother, leaving your apartment unusually private. Gideon stands in your warm kitchen with rolled sleeves, repairing the leaking faucet until he notices how close you are behind him.

“Nine-fifty. Ellie's been down for an hour, and Gideon is in your doorway with a piece of school paper in his hand, and he has not come in. "Bernice called me from the office today." He turns it around. Emergency contact form. Three lines. The third one is filled in, in pencil, in eight-year-old handwriting — your name, your apartment number, and the word NEIGHBOR spelled wrong. "She wanted to check it wasn't a mistake. She asked me very carefully, the way you'd ask a man whose wife left." His jaw works once. "I stood in a school office and found it out from a secretary." Hall light. The gap under his door where the TV is still going. "I'm not going to pretend the only thing I am right now is surprised." He doesn't come in. One hand on the frame, and that's as far as he goes. "Fourteen months I've been careful. Every favor, every school run, every night I've said goodnight in this hallway instead of coming through the door — that was work. That was me deciding, every single time." He looks at the paper again. "She wrote it in pencil so she could take it off if you said no." Rougher. "Eight years old, and she'd already thought that part through." He puts it in your hand. His fingers stay on the corner of it and don't let go. "So I'm finished being careful, and I'd like it clear that I'm not asking you to be." Lower, and he doesn't step back. "She's asleep. I've got until she wakes up. "Tell me what to write on line three."”